Silent Hill 2 retrospective – Reader’s Feature

A GameCentral reader takes a detailed looked back at Konami’s ground-breaking survival horror, and why both the HD update and subsequent sequels have never done it justice.

Silent Hill 2 – a hell of a game

Fog… thick, thick fog that is your first thought when you step out of the rather unhygienic public toilet you, James Sunderland find yourself in at the beginning of Silent Hill 2. Having just received a letter from his wife (who just so happens to be dead) James decides to travel to the foggy town itself as the letter proclaims that she is there waiting for him in Silent Hill, ‘our special place’.Obviously if I had found myself in the same situation receiving an invite from my deceased wife telling me to meet her in Great Yarmouth (our special place) I would discard the letter and put it down to a sick joke from Andi Wan and, whilst being quite upset, would think nothing more of it.There have been many survival horror games over the years and Silent Hill comes along and slaps in some psychological trauma in there for good measure, this was a game where you didn’t just find yourself armed with a shotgun and told to shoot everything that moves and solve some rather illogical puzzles along the way, this was one man’s decent in to madness and you were along for the ride and followed him down this path of insanity unless you were already insane and it was a trip down memory lane shouting at the TV ‘Oh, I remember the quivering meat piles coughing acid at me! Look the walls are peeling… help they are peeling… rust!’But one of Silent Hill 2’s greatest achievements has to be the relative normality of the settings, we had no luxurious or haunted mansions here, nope just an awful looking condemned tower block long since abandoned. And it is this everyday setting mixed with the absurd that is one of the game’s major strong points.There were many room in this tower block but each one seemed to have its own character and feel about it, from a blood-stained bed with faeces smeared up the walls (we have all been there) to even more disturbing, a guy who keeps butterflies. Silent Hill 2s imagery stays with you long after the final credits roll, navigating my way around my nan’s block of flats became much more menacing after playing this game but thankfully after seemingly turning into its own hell, graffiti, rust and dog excrement on the stairs I decided it was best to move her closer to us before she got impaled by a guy with a metal hat on.The hospital is also a highlight as it’s usually seen as a place of safety and help, not somewhere you are going to be approached by a shaking meat faced nurse with a knife in her hand, but judging by the current quality of the NHS we are not far behind.This town was practically empty with only a few residents left who seem to be just as confused as you are as to why you have ended up here. Eddie being a particularly unstable guy and when you first meet him he is huddled over a toilet throwing up and later on in the game you meet a homicidal lady who is looking for her mother whilst holding a knife and talking… very… slowly whilst staring in to the distance, this doesn’t faze James though who is as friendly as ever so yes all in all not a very endearing bunch of residents.But the most dominant and integral to the plot is Maria, a lady who bears a striking resemblance to James’ dead wife Mary.

And you probably would worry about the residents if it wasn’t for the fact you were being pursued by a maniac with a massive machete! You never really understood why (some people believe it is the manifestation of James’ guilt, but that doesn’t make him any less menacing) and being an everyday guy James wasn’t best equipped to deal with such an adversary, he could whack a crowbar against the steel object adorning his head but all that would achieve is slight earache. Yes, you had no chance of winning so you either ran or pumped bullets until he got fed up and walked away.On a side note I did get to face Pyramid Head in an arcade a few years later, it was a lightgun game and I insisted my girlfriend stood aside whilst I used both lightguns John Woo style, it was one of the greatest days of my life.Silent Hill 2 has a very distinctive art design with a purposefully grainy look that helps to disguise many flaws that games of the same era suffer from, the aforementioned draw distance not being a problem as it is masked by the fog. Anyone who has played Silent Hill 2 will agree that there is a certain ‘dirtiness’ to the game that seeps from its every pour that gives you the feeling that if you so much as brushed up against a wall you would come home with more diseases than a night with a prostitute, in a hospital waste bin, that is housed inside a military germ warfare plant run by lepers who contracted the plague.Yes, grimy isn’t the word, you would have to come up with a whole new word to explain what the design team came up with, it makes you wonder if they are now locked away in strait jackets as development was passed on to American studios who destroyed the series (in my opinion). I mean I could probably come up with worse in my head, and I suppose I do on a daily basis so I suppose it’s a good thing that I cannot code it and filter it through people’s TVs in to their mind.Playing again the gameplay is rather archaic and the ‘find key for particular lock’ pattern of gameplay has long been succeeded but just as you would enjoy an old grainy horror movie Silent Hill 2 brings back the same sense of joy, although I doubt ‘joy’ is the correct word to use.And then there is the music, this was the first game I had played that the music not only complimented what was happening on screen, but also raised the tension to another level entirely, Silent Hill 2 shared many qualities with a horror film in that sense. The soundtrack was composed by Akira Yamaoka who later went on to work on Shadows Of The Damned with an equally amazing score.Silent Hill 2 is as affecting and easy to play today as it was when first released in 2001 and will always be remembered fondly by those that were drawn in to its world of filth. True some of the game design now seems rather old fashioned but again this only adds to the appeal similar when you sit down to watch an old horror film.I enjoyed watching the warped grainy image of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre on my dad’s old VHS player far more than I did lately on a Blu-ray player. And that’s why Silent Hill 2 remains an important part of gaming history even today… or if you would prefer all of its charm and character removed just play the recently released Silent Hill HD Collection.In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again someday… but you never did. Well, I’m alone there now in our special place… waiting for you.P.S Hurry up because the people around here are bloody mental!By Walker R. O.Video:Check out the Silent Hill HD Collection trailerThe reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, emailgamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk.